No. But I believe that I am considered so by some family and acquaintances.

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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )

I started getting told I was weird as soon as I entered primary school. Specifically that word, mainly by my peers but sometimes adults and authority figures. That made me feel weird.

It's hard to think of examples.

I talk to my animals and out loud to no one a lot.I have a similar way of thinking during conversations or thought tangents to Brun.I like to eat food of my plate in an order, least favourite thing to most favourite thing. Sometimes this leads to deconstructing part of or all the meal before eating anything.

I started getting told I was weird as soon as I entered primary school. Specifically that word, mainly by my peers but sometimes adults and authority figures. That made me feel weird....I talk to my animals and out loud to no one a lot.I like to eat food of my plate in an order, least favourite thing to most favourite thing. Sometimes this leads to deconstructing part of or all the meal before eating anything.

I thought I was the only one who did that (the food bit)!

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"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you donít know you're a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that." - David Dunning

Yes, but sometimes your favourite food cools quickly and is best eaten piping hot. If you eat it last, then by this time it might not even be your favourite food any more, due to its critically cooled state. So now you've got yourself a multiple-objective optimisation problem to deal with.

My usual approach is to get a taste of that favourite food while it is at its best, divert to my least favourite, eating in the usual order, but occasionally returning to my favourite so that I can be sure that it will all be eaten before it reaches Critically Cooled state. Sometimes I have to finish on my second favourite food in order to ensure this.

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"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds (paraphrased)

I used to do that, but now I don't, partly because I like to savour even my "least favourite" things, and partly because wolfing down food as quickly as possible is not entirely compatible with conversing with my dining companion(s).

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"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds (paraphrased)

I started getting told I was weird as soon as I entered primary school. Specifically that word, mainly by my peers but sometimes adults and authority figures. That made me feel weird.

It's hard to think of examples.

I talk to my animals and out loud to no one a lot.I have a similar way of thinking during conversations or thought tangents to Brun.I like to eat food of my plate in an order, least favourite thing to most favourite thing. Sometimes this leads to deconstructing part of or all the meal before eating anything.

Lots of people talk to their pets and think alloud.

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and the universe said you are not alone and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing

That's true but it doesn't mean some people, even some of those who do it, don't think it's strange. Also a lot of people have some kind of amount of doing it they think is okay and I think I'm well past a lot of people's limits, at least out of those who know me.

I tend to assume I'm normal, and am surprised whenever I discover other people not thinking the same way I do about something. Is that weird? I don't know.

What do you mean? Other people having different opinions, or other people arriving at theirs in fundamentally different ways?

Or are you wary of being arrogant, and try to avoid thinking of other people as simply being wrong?

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"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you donít know you're a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that." - David Dunning

I talk to my animals and out loud to no one a lot....I like to eat food of my plate in an order, least favourite thing to most favourite thing. Sometimes this leads to deconstructing part of or all the meal before eating anything.

Hell, I tend to have quick conversations with myself, but that's more to help me formulate my thoughts into something that doesn't resemble jibberish.

And I also do the food thing, least favourite to favourite.

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Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart but I am street smart.", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I am imaginary smart."

I tend to assume I'm normal, and am surprised whenever I discover other people not thinking the same way I do about something. Is that weird? I don't know.

What do you mean? Other people having different opinions, or other people arriving at theirs in fundamentally different ways?

The latter. How even people who arrived at the same opinion got there via completely different reasoning, or by interpreting something we both saw in an entirely different way.

Uhuh ... Nowadays, I mostly just get angry - I guess two decades in a hard science and years of TAing & grading have thoroughly convinced me that "sometimes, when people think different from me it's because they're wrong".

I remember agonizing a lot when I started grading students (chronic self-doubt and OCD added to that), but I also remember that my shyness to tell people that they made a booboo related inversely to the time I spent with their ... mentations. As much fun as the whole "RaRaRah We're theoretical physicists and love being obsessive & underpaid!"-thingy is, you do want to go home at some point in the night ...

What sort of surprises me is when people don't care - even when they're shown they're wrong, even when they finally, after hours of discussion and stonewalling, acknowledge to you they were wrong - they don't care that they embarrassed themselves, they don't care what being "sloppy thinkers, but adamant about their results" means for their reputation, they don't care they wasted significant amounts of your time & energy. That's where I start feeling contempt and ... wariness. I only met three people of that sort past the Masters-level, but the experiences, as well as some of the reactions from other colleagues to such antics, were ... memorable (*).

(*) Which is part of why I still have faith in organized science - I have this pet theory that the whole outfit sort of selects for people who really dislike cognitive dissonance on the one hand, but just have to know on the other. And by construction, science tries to minimize the number of times where correctness can be regarded as a matter of opinion - there's a significant risk that "talking your way out of it" not only won't work, but will have serious repercussions. That you'll be shown to have been wrong, without any possible doubt, in full view of everybody, including your closest friends, most vicious enemies and the most important people in your profession (Also: Those circles are small. Tens of thousands per subfield, several hundreds to some thousands per specialisation, about 20-100 "people you have to know" per 'sect' - there's cliques of people who prefer the one or other 'method' - the "Luttinger liquid people", "The DMRG-mafia" etc.etc. I'd dined with five or so 'world-leading experts' in my specialisation already as an undergrad, and that's not anything unusual). Not a perfect protection against malcognitions, pig-headedness, poisonous hierarchies or plain cheating ... but the sort of people who enjoy playing that weird game are generally ill-suited to enjoy 'winning it for the wrong reasons'. Physicists at least, can get really nasty about people not admitting they're wrong, in an unrestrained, petty Lord-of-the-Flies way - "Was it really necessary to make fun of him in front of an international audience?" "I don't think I understand your question - He is wrong!". I once witnessed a conversation between my advisors (Masters and PhD, respectively) about an "incident" at a conference, and Ale's profound satisfaction of being proven right after the fact. I asked what the incident was and got the answer that someone had doubted a conclusion of his in a ... hurtful way. I pressed a bit further, and was told that what the offender had asked was "Are you serious about this?". Now imagine people who regard that kind of innocuous remark as a memorable slight getting ... explicit.

« Last Edit: 24 Jan 2018, 09:30 by Case »

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"Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter" - Rosa Luxemburg"The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you donít know you're a member of the Dunning-Kruger club. People miss that." - David Dunning

Not talking to your pets is weird. Talking to your pets a hell of a lot is maybe a little weird.

You're an eccentric when your pets talk to you. I want to get a pet bird one day, teach it how to speak, and be the eccentric.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

When my brother went, with his wife, on his first sabbatical in California, he particularly liked that he could lean out of his kitchen window and pick a grapefruit for breakfast.

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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )

What sort of surprises me is when people don't care - even when they're shown they're wrong, even when they finally, after hours of discussion and stonewalling, acknowledge to you they were wrong - they don't care that they embarrassed themselves, they don't care what being "sloppy thinkers, but adamant about their results" means for their reputation, they don't care they wasted significant amounts of your time & energy. That's where I start feeling contempt and ... wariness. I only met three people of that sort past the Masters-level, but the experiences, as well as some of the reactions from other colleagues to such antics, were ... memorable (*).

Yeah, I hear ya.

I was the opposite of this growing up. I was so afraid of saying something wrongheaded or idiotic that I almost never expressed my opinion at all. It took me a lot of time, and some counseling, for me to realise that I was more often (although not always) better off expressing my opinion, being wrong, acknowledging that I was wrong, and learning thereby. I am also still learning that even when I am 100% convinced that the other person is wrong, it can be good to at least acknowledge some common ground, so that some form of discussion may continue.

If I can just get my ego to pipe down a bit more often, then maybe I'll get somewhere.

Not talking to your pets is weird. Talking to your pets a hell of a lot is maybe a little weird.

You're an eccentric when your pets talk to you. I want to get a pet bird one day, teach it how to speak, and be the eccentric.

I forgot to talk about the pet thing. I talk to my kitten all the time. Sometimes it's pointlessly detailed explanations of things like, "No, we can't give you chocolate, it is very bad for you and will make you ill, okay? Okay, now, wait, we don't climb the curtain, come on, come down, do you want to play? Let's play" etc etc etc. I guess tone of voice is important for bonding, and it would feel a lot weirder to say "blah blah blah" (actually, I've done that too).

Now, talking to plants, that's a bit weird.

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"There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds (paraphrased)

My father-in-law once decided to test the theory that dogs responded mainly to voice recognition rather than actual words by walking around Hampstead Heath with his dog calling him back by shouting out "Income Tax!".

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Now, talking to plants, that's a bit weird.

Prince Charles; 'nuff said. Well, George III did it too (trees for preference), but he was sick.

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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )

My father-in-law once decided to test the theory that dogs responded mainly to voice recognition rather than actual words by walking around Hampstead Heath with his dog calling him back by shouting out "Income Tax!".

Whichever it was, it doesn't say much. Take two dog owners and have each of them call the other one's dog by name, then you have a proper experiment.

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Quote from: snalin

I just got the image of a midwife and a woman giving birth swinging towards each other on a trapeze - when they meet, the midwife pulls the baby out. The knife juggler is standing on the floor and cuts the umbilical cord with a a knifethrow.

Plus, any ad hoc experiment like this is likely to produce flawed results, due to factors not taken into account. Even people who study animal behaviour professionally have made (sometimes astonishing, once you know the full picture) leaps of logic, ommissions or let their personal biases influence their conclusions.

(incidentally, my own experience with dogs suggests that they are usually capable of recognising a few dozen words, independent of tone of voice and context. But even if that's true, it varies VASTLY between two dogs. Some dogs are remarkably good at regognizing words, or seem to be, and some dogs either are kinda dumb, or just don't care enough to react in a way that's expected. Which - i.e., the willingness to DO something - by itself is a source of potential bias, because we tend to equate "dog responds" with "dog understands", and it's obviously not a one-to-one correspondence. In either direction.)

Really, people don't talk to their pets? I'll bet they don't listen to them either.

With my dog, I can generally tell when she doesn't want to understand, and when she doesn't understand. But then, I've been around dogs nearly all my life. Same with the ones before that, although the willingess to respond does vary between individuals, and between breeds.

My father-in-law once decided to test the theory that dogs responded mainly to voice recognition rather than actual words by walking around Hampstead Heath with his dog calling him back by shouting out "Income Tax!".

What were the results of that experiment?

The dog continued to ignore him, as before, of course!

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"Being human, having your health; that's what's important."(from: Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi )"As long as we're all living, and as long as we're all having fun, that should do it, right?"(from: The Eccentric Family )